Graphene is a material with high conductivity and stable electric, mechanical and chemical characteristics. Graphene has about 100 times higher electron mobility than silicon and about 100 times higher current flow rate than copper. Therefore, recently there has been much research into various aspects of graphene.
Graphene consists of only carbons having relatively small atomic weights, and thus is easily processable into 1- or 2-dimentional nanopatterns. This may be applied to control semi-conductive or conductive characteristics of a material, and to manufacture a wide range of functional devices, such as sensors and memory devices, based on a variety of chemical bonds of carbons.
The field of transparent electrodes is one application field of graphene with rapidly increasing marketability. Due to the long use of indium tin oxide (ITO) as a major transparent electrode material, problems have arose such as indium resource depletion and an increase in costs. Furthermore, indium is breakable and thus is not be applicable in flexible products that are foldable or extensible. For these reasons, there has been an increasing need for the development of graphene as an alternative to indium.
However, efficient synthesis and transfer of graphene, or appropriate dopants are not yet available, so that currently available graphene-based electrode devices fail to ensure satisfactory quality and scale required in practical production.